


In From the Storm

by Nagaem_C



Series: The Sewing Box: Needles and Pins One-Shots [9]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Explanations, Friendship, Gen, Grief/Mourning, POV Alternating, Post-Reichenbach, Pre-Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-16
Updated: 2014-12-16
Packaged: 2018-02-28 22:47:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2749961
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nagaem_C/pseuds/Nagaem_C
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The morning of June fifteenth brings a surprising storm to Baker Street...and rain, too.<br/>When Sherlock returns to London after three years away, he's got a bit of explaining to do.</p><p> <b>(Takes place exactly three years after Reichenbach, ten weeks before Stitching Up the Tears; may stand alone)</b></p><p>POV alternates evenly between John and Sherlock.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In From the Storm

  
**In From the Storm**  
 _(15 June 2014)_

.

 

John woke up on Sunday morning, looked out his bedroom window to survey the cloudy view over the alley, and considered the day ahead in a vague sort of way.

 _I promised Mrs Hudson I'd fix those loose drawer fronts on her kitchen cabinets while she's still on holiday with her sister,_ he remembered, yawning. _And it looks like rain soon; I should have popped out to get the shopping before I went to work yesterday..._

He hadn't, even though he'd known that he was entirely out of both butter and eggs. And after work, instead of running his errands, John had gone to get a pint—alone, which was admittedly not his usual habit. He'd texted Greg, on impulse; his friend had promised to try and make it along when he finished up the domestic homicide he'd been working, but it had run late.

 _We're likely to be getting together tonight, anyway,_ he reminded himself...and with that, the last foggy remnants of sleep fell away, banished by the knowledge of the date.

John sat heavily on the bed and took a few deep breaths. He was in a better place now than he had been a year before, certainly, but getting there had been a long struggle. He'd wondered, at times, if leaving Baker Street might have been better for him—if shutting off contact with the others in that select circle might have given him a respite from his pain—but inevitably, he'd considered Mrs Hudson, and Greg, and thought better of it. He couldn't pretend that he was the only one hit hard by the loss. Running away wouldn't have helped his persistent sense of guilt. If anything, it would have expanded its scope.

_Right. Enough bloody wallowing. Can't this just be another day?_

He knew it was unlikely to be so, but he was determined to try and get through it. If he could manage to hold himself together until evening, when he could blow off steam in the company of someone who understood, then so much the better.

Sighing, John stood and began gathering up the dirty clothing he'd tossed into the corner beside the closet. The best strategy today would surely be to keep busy, and laundry was going to be the first order of business.

 

.

 

Sherlock stepped off the train at St Pancras station and ducked quickly into a deep crowd out of habit, hitching his small rucksack up on his shoulder as he scanned the surroundings for potential threats. Embarrassingly, it took him nearly thirty seconds to remember that the only thing he needed to avoid here was the ever-present network of CCTV cameras. Mycroft would know of his arrival soon enough—probably within the next hour, no matter how much caution he exercised. But he wasn't trying to hide, only to delay the inevitable.

He'd been travelling for three days straight, alternating between exhausted slumps and paranoid jitters as he transferred from bus to ferry to train, to ferry again; the previous Wednesday had seen him in Marrakesh, pale-haired and covered in the blood of Moriarty's final lieutenant. Since then, he'd ditched the clothing and mannerisms of his last alias, and applied mahogany hair dye in a restroom at a Spanish train station. His final acquisition, just before ferrying from Belgium to Scotland, was a long, dark coat—nothing like his beloved Belstaff, of course, but needs must—which he'd worn as he made the final leg of his journey from Edinburgh. It was a matter of personal pride, to return to the streets of his city without the layers of protective disguise that he'd kept wrapped about himself for so long. A bit frivolous, perhaps, but the idea had been a comfort over the past few months.

Thirty-six minutes' walk beneath the low, darkening sky, ducking into his collar at each camera-monitored intersection, and Sherlock's feet turned onto the pavement of Baker Street at last. As many times as he'd visualised this day, as many times as he'd imagined savouring each moment—the smell of the air, the sight of each familiar building along the way as he approached, triumphant—when it came down to it, the experience itself was a blur, a flash. When his feet touched the doorstep at 221, he had barely begun to process the tangle of impressions.

 _Careful,_ he warned himself, glancing around before hunching forward and slipping the little set of picks from his breast pocket. He sharpened his ears and leaned in: quiet but for the telltale rumble of the clothes dryer. The stacked washer-dryer and a small worktable were located within a pantry-like alcove at the back of the hall, tucked in around the corner from Mrs Hudson's kitchen door. Unless his habits had drastically changed in the past three years, John could be expected to stay out of sight in the little room while it ran.

 _He always likes to pull out his clothes and fold them the minute the machine stops,_ Sherlock remembered, and the memory made his fingers tighten on the picks.

Silent and quick, he released the latch and slipped inside, just as the first drops of rain spattered the back of his head.

 

.

 

John folded the last pair of jeans and laid it atop his laundry basket with a little sigh. The quiet left in the wake of the stopped dryer seemed thick and oppressively empty; without the muffled background noise of Mrs Hudson's television, he could hear only the hush of rain at the front of the building.

 _I have to get out of here,_ he thought. _I should've gone out to begin with._

Hoisting the basket onto his hip, he stumped up the hallway to the stairs. As he went, he focused on what he could do next, to avoid his silent flat. The groceries were one thing, but he needed to make them his last activity, or he'd need to come back much too soon.

_I wonder how long this storm will last? If I wear my waterproof boots, and take an umbrella—_

The thought cut off abruptly as John reached the first floor. The door to the sitting room had been open when he'd brought the laundry down earlier, he was _sure_ of it. Now it stood almost completely closed, and was that a _shadow_ he saw moving across the gap?

John felt his heart beginning to race; he immediately set the basket down, then pulled the mobile from his pocket and glanced at it—no messages or missed calls. The only people with keys to 221 were Mrs Hudson and Greg, as far as he was aware, and Greg would never come in without notice.

_Mycroft, maybe? Surely he could get in, if he wanted to. But I haven't spoken to him in over two years!_

He knew he didn't have the element of surprise, but whoever this was—be it Mycroft, or any _other_ hostile intruder—surely a confident approach was a good bet. Clenching his hand around the phone, he set his jaw and strode forward.

"Stop there," he half-shouted, pushing through the door hard enough to make it smack the shelving unit behind it—and in the next second his mind processed the sight before him, and his breath seized up, becoming a strained whisper. "Oh God. Sh-sher-lock..."

"Hello, John," replied the man—the apparition, the _impossible_ —standing in the centre of the room with a faint smirk upon his face. His coat was wrong, his hair was short and sticking up at bizarre angles, and he held himself oddly, but—

—John's hand hurt.

"All right," gasped Sherlock, holding fingers over his offended cheekbone and staggering backwards. "All right, yes, that's a fair reaction."

"Fair?" John wheezed, blinking with watering eyes at his knuckles. "You're _dead."_

"You've clearly been mistaken."

"No. No, I _watched_ you die, you made me watch you _die,_ Sher—!"

That was all he could manage before his throat made a concerted attempt to close entirely. With a strangled groan, he fled to the landing, slamming the door behind him.

His fingers shook as he activated his phone and selected the name at the top of his contact list. When the call connected, he didn't wait for the familiar voice to greet him; instead, he blurted, "G-Greg. You won't—I can't— _God._ You, you need to get over here."

"John? Christ, mate, what's wrong? Breathe!"

John tilted his head back against the wall and tried to comply. _In. Out. In, dammit, in._ He swallowed and eventually managed, "...Baker Street."

Greg's reply was immediate, and backed with a steely edge. "On my way. What's going on?"

"You wouldn't believe me. Just get here, yeah?" Ending the call, he turned his head and stared at the closed door to the sitting room. Ten seconds of silence was enough to shake his certainty in what he'd just seen—the initial hard surge of adrenalin was quickly dropping off, leaving him trembling in its wake. Only the throbbing in his right hand stood testament.

"I must be going crazy," he told the door softly.

"No." The voice was muffled, but not enough to obscure its distinctive resonance. "You know you're not."

"Stop!"

The doorknob stilled its silent rotation. "John..."

"No. Just, I can't—I can't—"

"It's fine," Sherlock sighed; there was a hushed scrape of fabric against the wood, and when his deep voice sounded again, it was lower to the ground. "At least let me speak?"

John's eyes fell closed, and he slid slowly down the wall, too, clamping his teeth together over his lips. Somehow he made some kind of affirmative sound.

"I know this must be a bit of a shock," began Sherlock. "You must understand there was no way to warn you, or prepare you..."

_Wasn't there? 'I'm not dead' might have been a start!_

"But I came back as soon as I could. Truly, I never expected my work to take so long."

"Work," John croaked. "You were _working._ "

"I was. There was much to do, to ensure the complete demise of Moriarty's network..."

John couldn't wrap his head around it. Sherlock was still talking, but the words seemed fuzzy and indistinct, and the only thoughts that surfaced in the confused whirlwind of John's mind were _work. He was off somewhere traipsing after bloody Moriarty. All this time. Working._

"...John?"

John blinked and looked up to see that his demand for the closed door had been ignored. At the sight of Sherlock, towering over him with a vaguely concerned expression, his pulse sped once more and his mouth dried out.

"You weren't answering me. You should at least go in and sit down; you're not looking well, John." Sherlock's eyes flitted over John without making real eye contact, and then he extended a pale hand.

John stared at it for a split second before realising he couldn't very well refuse the assistance. He reluctantly allowed Sherlock to take his hand and pull him up from the floor—and even though the explosion of near-panic set off by the touch jangled his nerves, he didn't miss the little wince Sherlock tried to cover as he took the extra weight.

 

.

 

Sherlock wandered the edges of the sitting room, his head tilting this way and that, brushing his fingers over various objects.

 _It's almost all still here,_ he marvelled. _Nearly exactly as I remember it._

When he'd first entered the flat, the simple fact of his being _home at last_ had overwhelmed him, to the point that he hadn't been able to truly give his attention to the details—and the knowledge that John had been downstairs, unaware, had felt like a burning brand at the back of his neck. Now that the initial catharsis seemed to be over with, Sherlock could really look around and experience the little things. The framed taxidermied bat and beetles his father had gifted him before he'd gone off to university, the two silver teapots that had been his grandmother's before he'd contaminated them with a toxic experiment at age twelve, the little bronze statuette that so resembled the Irish setter he'd loved as a child—they were all still here, in nearly their original places, as if John truly understood their importance. Sherlock wasn't the type to openly express his sentimentality. He knew he'd never told John any of the stories behind the wide variety of strange keepsakes with which he'd cluttered their flat, and he'd assumed that John, with his more disciplined and restrained nature, would likely pare these items down after Sherlock's apparent demise. What did it mean, that they were _all_ right where he'd left them?

He could hear John behind him, standing in the centre of the room and watching his every move.

John had refused to sit. He was breathing deep and loud in an attempt to retain the small amount of calm he'd managed to achieve, but soon he broke the tense silence. "Why," he growled. "Why, of all days, why today? The same bloody day! What kind of fucking game are you even playing at?"

This brought Sherlock to a standstill before the mantelpiece, his palm resting lightly over the smooth bone of the skull. "Is it? Why—It is. Oh. I admit I hadn't given the date of my fall much thought," he said, words rattling casually off his tongue at high speed. "It was merely the first opportunity I had to return; I suppose the actual date is a bit of a coincidence, isn't it? Though, I must say, it's got a lovely sort of symmetry..."

"No. Do not. _Do not_ treat this lightly! This is not about _symmetry,_ it's not good, or fun, or _brilliant_ —" John's voice broke off into a harsh wheeze.

Sherlock's eyes flicked up immediately from the skull to the mirror, and he turned as he said, "John, you really should sit down. I can explain it all, it's actually quite justifiable; what I did, it was only because Moriarty—"

" _Stop!_ " shouted John between heaving breaths, backing up until he stumbled on the edge of the coffee table. "You can't be _telling_ me this. Not now. I don't want to hear a word about fucking _Moriarty_ and—and how you decided that committing _suicide_ was a fucking _justifiable_ —No. No."

Feeling thwarted, Sherlock went to the kitchen, glancing around helplessly before plucking up a glass from the drain board and filling it with water. Turning back to the sitting room, he approached to offer it, but John was seemingly on the verge of a full-blown anxiety attack. He backed up almost into the window to avoid Sherlock's touch.

"If you would simply let me explain," Sherlock started again, quickly retreating and leaving the glass on the table within John's reach, "you'd see why—"

A clatter of motion sounded from downstairs; a key turned in the lock, and the door was thrown open with careless force. Not Mrs Hudson: heavy feet mounted the stairs at a dead run. Sherlock fell silent and watched the door expectantly.

"John," gasped Lestrade, reaching the sitting room doorway and coming to a panting halt; "I got here as fast as I could—"

Just one step forward brought Sherlock into the DI's line of sight, and his words choked off into a strange gasp.

"Lestrade," Sherlock greeted him, running cool, neutral eyes up and down the man's body.

_Ran in the rain, at least four streets, possibly farther. Not as winded as he might be: he's been running frequently over the last few years. He worked late to close a minor case last night. Ate an unsatisfactory breakfast, then spent the morning doing paperwork. He wants to punch me...no, maybe he doesn't..._

Lestrade had frozen in place, dripping on the rug as Sherlock completed his scrutiny. Eyes wide, he finally breathed, "You. Bloody _bastard._ " He looked as if he was about to say more, but instead he cut his eyes over to John, stepping briskly past Sherlock as if his presence was of no consequence.

"John," Lestrade said, his voice immediately soothing and calm in a way that struck Sherlock as practised, "it's all right. Come on, sit down; here, that's it—head down. Deep breaths, now. Okay. Okay. You're all right."

Sherlock watched, powerless and inexplicably annoyed, as the older man led John to the sofa with a gentle and thoroughly wet arm across his back. When John was settled to his satisfaction, Lestrade crossed the room again, avoiding Sherlock's gaze as he hung his soaked macintosh on the coat tree. After a second's consideration, he shrugged out of his suit jacket and hung it as well, and toed off his shoes beside the door. Only then did he turn to face Sherlock once more.

"So," he ground out. "Not dead, then."

"Obviously not," answered Sherlock defiantly, clasping his hands behind his back.

Lestrade's lips pressed thin. A parade of emotions seemed to cross his eyes, and they glittered with sudden moisture, but his face remained stern.

 

.

 

It took John a few minutes to get his breathing back under control. He sat with his head tipped downwards between his wide-spread knees, staring with watery eyes at the edge of a piece of junk mail, fallen and kicked half under the sofa. Meanwhile, the other two men were speaking in low voices, a slow conversation liberally seasoned with pregnant pauses.

"How long have you been here?" Greg eventually asked, forcing a casual tone in an apparent attempt to help John calm down.

"In the United Kingdom? Less than twenty-four hours. In London, about two. In this flat, an hour and twenty minutes. I expect my brother will be popping in for a visit at his earliest convenience...but the Chinese summit is on today, so we _might_ be granted as much as two more hours' privacy if we're lucky."

"I take it he won't be surprised, then." Now Greg sounded as if he were simmering, well on his way to a rolling boil.

"Very little surprises Mycroft. _You_ know that."

"I do. And that wasn't what I was asking."

"No, it wasn't. You want to know if he knew. If he was involved."

"It's not an unreasonable question..."

"Yes. He was aware of my overall plan, although he was privy to almost none of the details. He last received confirmation of my location and safety approximately five months ago..."

John was startled by a strange noise, then realised that he'd been the one to make it. The talk paused; there was another awkward silence before Greg cleared his throat, saying, "Tea. I'll fix it for us, all right, half a tick..."

With the quiet sounds of his friend bustling about in the kitchen as a backdrop, John raised his head to find Sherlock seated in the black armchair and peering across at him with an expression of cautious reserve. After a moment, he asked, "Are you all right, John?"

"Fine," John replied automatically, knowing it was a blatant lie and knowing Sherlock knew it. "I mean—sure, yeah. You're—not dead, right? That's—I'm fine."

One eyebrow lifted minutely. "Are you sure? I confess, the idea that you might be so affected hadn't occurred to me. It's probably quite a shock for you to accept."

"That...is the understatement of the _year._ Of, well, the last three years, in fact."

Sherlock gave a hint of a chuckle. "Oh, I've _missed_ that."

"Missed what?" asked John, hanging his head low once more as his voice cracked.

"Being told I'm an idiot."

Greg chose that moment to step back in, offering John and Sherlock their cups in turn. "If that's what you miss, I'll be happy to contribute. What the bleeding fuck were you about, anyway, doing what you did? Letting us all _believe_ it like that?"

"What was necessary," Sherlock replied simply, taking a sip of tea and making an odd little face; John tasted his and found it fine. "I couldn't risk anyone realising my deception. If those I left in London were seen to react strangely—to give any sign that I might be alive—well. Everything would have been ruined."

"You didn't think we could pull it off, eh?" Greg moved past them with his own beverage to sit in one of the wooden chairs. "Didn't trust us to keep a secret?"

"Not in the slightest," grinned Sherlock. "Neither one of you can lie your way out of a paper bag, really. But it's all water under the bridge, yes? You'll get over it. Things will be back to normal in no time! Of course, Lestrade, it may take a little while for Mycroft to arrange my official return. Paperwork, you know, always _such_ a hassle. Still, I'm sure I'll be available to assist on cases before too terribly long..."

John had thought himself calmer. He'd tried to get a handle on his reactions, really he had—it was infuriating to feel so out of control, so ridiculously fragile—but listening to Sherlock talk about the whole situation so _flippantly_ was more than he could take just then. Blowing out a hard breath and shoving his mug onto the coffee table, he stood suddenly, storming past Greg and out through the kitchen without a word.

Behind him, he heard Sherlock's voice: "Was it something I said?"

 _It's what you didn't bloody say,_ John shouted at him silently, pushing into the bathroom and throwing open the little linens hamper. _It's that you stayed away for three goddamn years when one word, one word would have changed everything!_

Taking the side door out of the kitchen, he stooped to rifle through the cooling basket of clothing in the hall, as well, thinking, _Granted, I probably would've gone after you just to wring your fucking neck..._

"Here, Greg," he said shortly, returning to give his friend the clean towels he'd retrieved, along with a T-shirt and his roomiest pair of flannel pyjama bottoms. "Dry off, make yourself at home. You know where everything is."

He steeled himself to look over once more and meet Sherlock's pale, inquisitive stare, watching the self-assured smirk falter and drop from that too-thin face. Clamping down on the howl of confused rage that threatened to break free, he bit out, " _I'll_ be upstairs," before stomping away.

 

.

 

Lestrade padded quietly off into the bath as John had suggested, and Sherlock sipped at his tea in the suddenly empty room.

 _I suppose I could have handled that better,_ he thought. _I don't know what got into me, there._

The tension that had been ratcheting up within him, that had taken the place of his grimly accustomed determination beginning at that final bloody moment in Morocco, and that had expanded and trembled with each moment spent in this flat—it was as if his guts were twisted into knots that were somehow crafted predominantly of _joy_ and _relief,_ odd as that seemed. He'd let it spill over, caught up in his hedonistic enjoyment at hearing the familiar sarcastic wit of his friends...his _friends,_ who were still alive and well.

 _Because of me,_ he told himself. _I've succeeded, and now that I'm home, it will all be okay. It was worth the—it was worth all of it!_

He basked in the glow of the realisation, even as he admonished himself for upsetting John once more. He would have to be more careful, later, that's all.

Within two minutes, the DI emerged in bare feet and borrowed pyjamas, his ankles protruding comically from the shorter man's clothing. He didn't seem bothered in any way by his bedraggled appearance; without comment, he carried the wet items out and down the stairs. The faint thundering of the clothes dryer could be heard from below shortly thereafter.

 _Lestrade really does know where everything is. He's quite familiar, in fact; he's done this before, worn John's clothing and done his laundry here._ Sherlock frowned, his mind spinning up and quickly discarding a handful of possibilities that could lead to such a situation. Suddenly, the flush of satisfaction went cold in his stomach.

When Lestrade returned to the sitting room, stepping blithely around the puddles he'd left on the rug and settling himself easily in John's armchair, Sherlock couldn't hold back.

"So, this is what you do, now?"

"What's that?"

"You act as John's caretaker? Soothe his frazzled nerves? Pop in, fix him tea and put him to bed?" Sherlock felt the twisting sneer on his lips; he wasn't sure how this sudden vitriol had arisen, but the words came easily, a language of derision and sarcasm in which he was long-fluent.

Lestrade's expression shifted, unreadable. "Not exactly. Not so much lately."

"So you have done, then."

"You really want to know, do you?" Lestrade crossed his arms. "You'd not rather _deduce_ it, everything you put us through?"

Narrowing his eyes, Sherlock studied the man once more.

He was out of practice; in years past, he'd been able to read Lestrade's entire life like an open book. Frequent contact had made it utterly simple, then—observing minute changes from one day to the next that pointed to a sleepless night, frustration with a coworker, a craving for a favourite food, an argument with his wife...

"Finally out from under that marriage of yours, then?" he muttered, unable to resist one last dig even as the petty desire to upset the man drained away from him.

"Low blow, that, but you're not getting a rise out of me that way. It's old news, to me. Two years this September."

Subdued, Sherlock nodded. Silence stretched between them; he stared into the dregs of his tea until Lestrade spoke again.

"Why, Sherlock?"

He glanced towards the upstairs, reflexively. The explanation that had been so ready on his lips before felt brittle and inadequate now, denied its original outlet.

"Come on. Give me something here; help me understand, will you? You said before: everything would have been ruined. What were you after?"

That was classic Lestrade: always looking for more, master of the gentle push. Sighing, Sherlock gave in.

"Moriarty was well-prepared for our meeting that morning," he began soberly. "I'd thought at first that I'd outsmarted him—I was _close._ But then he revealed the existence of three snipers, primed and ready to eliminate three targets. There was only one signal that would call them off their orders, and that was my death."

"Only _one_ signal." Lestrade frowned, clearly thinking hard. "But...couldn't Moriarty have called it off himself, too, if you worked it just right?"

Sherlock dipped his head in acknowledgement; he often belittled the man's lack of imagination, but Lestrade was no slouch. "I'd hoped so, yes. Unfortunately, he took that option off the table when he shot himself in the head right in front of me."

"He _what_? But—but Moriarty died in January of the next year! It was the day after your birthday, for God's sake, it was all over the papers—"

"That's what we _wanted_ the world to see. Think it through, Lestrade; I was embarking on a mission to dismantle the man's worldwide network. Mycroft and I needed to delay the inevitable power vacuum resulting from Moriarty's suicide, until such time as the news could work in my favour! It was unexpected, to be sure. But my brother was quick to respond, and in the end it worked almost as we'd hoped."

"Okay...okay, I see your point. Let's just take it as read, all right, that John and I do _not_ appreciate being kept in the dark about this! You've no idea how stressful it was, worrying about Moriarty on top of mourning _you_." He wiped a hand over his eyes and visibly shook off whatever unpleasant memories had surfaced, returning to the discussion at hand. "So, fine. Three snipers, then. You're saying it was like the bomb vests. Pressuring you with the lives of innocents, calling on your sense of decency."

"No, that wouldn't have been nearly enough. Not just _innocents,_ Lestrade..." His tongue felt coated in ashes, now. He'd thought that having this out would feel good; why had he thought that? "John. Mrs Hudson. And you."

" _Me_?"

"You heard me. Perhaps you recall a DC Thomas Cline?"

Lestrade's jaw shut with a click. "Thomas...Tommy Cline. Yeah, he used to work with all of the Homicide teams. I had him on a few scenes here and there, but he left the force while I was out. They said it was family trouble or something—you're not saying—?"

"Yes. It wasn't family trouble."

"So...if you hadn't jumped..."

"Three gunmen, three bullets. Yours would have come from Cline."

"Fucking _hell,_ " murmured Lestrade faintly, raising a hand to his mouth. "And you didn't know, but you were still able to fake—"

"I didn't know, no, not until Moriarty made the ramifications clear. But I had an idea of what he would want from me. He'd been leading events to a planned conclusion all along, orchestrating the dance and manipulating the data. He'd said he owed me a fall; I had just barely enough time to prepare for it to be a literal one."

"That's...God. I can see why John was in such a state."

Sherlock set his empty mug aside. "John doesn't know."

"You'll tell him, of course. He needs to know." Lestrade shook his head, eyes still wide and incredulous. "Christ, I can't _believe_...He needs to know," he repeated.

"I already tried. He wouldn't _let_ me explain!"

"Give it time. You have to understand, you've just—fuck's sake, Sherlock, you were _dead._ "

 

.

 

John sat on his bed, his fingers laced tight together, and watched the rain on the glass: it seemed to be letting up. 

More likely, he knew, the other side of the building was still catching the brunt of the wind. He seemed to recall hearing the water pounding against the window at his back, just before Greg had arrived, but at the time the sound might just as well have been the blood rushing in his ears.

Beneath the pattering rain, John could hear the inconstant murmur of quiet discussion downstairs. Though he'd come up here with every intent to shut himself away, he'd left the door to his room open a few inches. It was just enough to allow him the audible confirmation of the morning's events.

 _I'm not dreaming,_ he thought..."This is real," he said aloud, the soft utterance sinking into his dove-grey plastered walls.

The exchange continued below him, unintelligible but for a raised word here and there. Even at this distance, he easily recognised the comforting growl of Greg's speech, with its rough consonants and bright edges, and he imagined the DI was likely drawing out the explanation and excuses that John hadn't been calm enough yet to receive. But it was the other muffled, distant voice that arrested his attention. He'd only heard it in his head, for three years now: that deep, velvet rumble that spoke in his nightmares and wishful imaginings alike.

_It's him._

_It's Sherlock._

_It really, really is._

Oh, John was angry. Of course he was. Livid, really. Confused, and amazed, and doubtful, and betrayed, and so _incredibly_ furious that he felt lightheaded. In fact, he was beginning to wonder if he might be in a mild state of shock. On a whim, he raised fingers to his cartoid and timed his pulse briefly: it seemed a bit thready and fast, so he kicked off his shoes and turned to lie atop the covers.

Out of the indistinct conversation, a single word floated up to the second floor in Greg's voice, perfectly intact: "... _believe_..." 

"I do," John answered him, making a declaration to his empty room. "I believe in Sherlock Holmes."

A quiet giggle escaped him, and then another. He could feel his cheeks spreading wide in a sort of incredulous, bewildered grin.

_Sherlock Holmes lives._

He threw an arm over his watery eyes and let the laughter bubble out, until the whole bed was shaking under his giddy mirth.

 

.

 

Lestrade trudged back up the stairs at barely a quarter the speed of his original arrival, as if fetching his clothing back from the dryer had sapped what remained of his energy.

"You seem a touch drained," commented Sherlock, crossing his legs and plucking idly at the sleeve of his awful coat. The shirt he wore beneath it was only marginally less horrid.

"Yeah, well, it's not every day I deal with people coming back from the dead before lunch, is it." Rather than go off and get changed right away, he fell into John's armchair once more with a sigh. The plaid pyjama bottoms hitched halfway up his calves as he slumped low.

"Won't you be expected back at work eventually?"

"Yeah, but...I dunno, I'll find _some_ kind of excuse. I'm owed a personal day, anyway; if I went back now I'd be bloody useless."

"As opposed to your usual state?"

"Oi, leave off, you!" snapped Lestrade, but he cracked a rueful smile in response to Sherlock's expectant smirk. It was the sort of impertinent teasing he'd received from Sherlock since the very day they'd met, after all; it was practically tradition.

Yawning, Sherlock stood, intending to satisfy his curiosity in regards to his bedroom. If John had changed next to nothing out here, perhaps his old clothing might still be available to him; given the opportunity to change and freshen up, he might feel more like himself.

 _I'd much rather be looking my best when Mycroft eventually comes calling,_ he decided...

A strong grip abruptly snagged him on his way past the other chair. He looked down at Lestrade's sturdy fingers, encircling his wrist—likely judging how thin he'd become, the middle finger and the thumb were in full contact—and then, when he was not released after the expected few seconds, he shifted his gaze at last to the older man's face.

There were _tears_ in Lestrade's eyes; this time, they were unmistakable. For God's sake, he hadn't seen the Inspector _cry_ in all—

—Sherlock's ribs hurt.

"What," he said, muffled in the man's broad shoulder.

The soft cotton of the T-shirt was warm, and smelled of the washing powder John favoured; the short, silver-grey hair above his ear brushed prickly-soft against the side of Sherlock's face.

Lestrade was making tiny sounds under his breath, some kind of unconscious, pre-verbal vocalisation as he swayed back and forth, squeezing hard.

It was an intolerable display of sentiment. Messy, common, and overemotional; typical fare for the Detective Inspector.

Sherlock let it go on for a minute and fifty-three seconds, uncomplaining.

He was disappointed when it was over.

 

\-- _fin_ \--

 


End file.
